I enjoyed the article, Brandi, though I have the same criticisms as many of our members here.
Unfortunate as it is, the writer's first paragraph is only too true about why ordinary people at large have so often looked down on male crossdressers or seen them as absurd; even possibly "sinister" as he says. Anything sufficiently "out of the ordinary" can be perceived as a threat.
Of course, people do see certain kinds of clothing as "appropriate" or "inappropriate" to a particular place or occasion, quite apart from matters of sex and gender. The little Danish boy would be entirely normal in his cowboy outfit, because it's only play-acting, a child's natural exploration of different roles. As an adult he might still enjoy acting the same role for his local town drama society in Hvidovre or wherever. But I doubt he'd feel a compulsion to dress like that around the house in the same way that crossdressers do, or to go out in public in that guise. If he walked into his office job with Ericsson, say, as casual dress no doubt he could get away with the hat, waistcoat and jeans--even the Western shirt, bolo tie and boots, which the author failed to mention. (I see you live in Arizona too.) But what Marty Robbins called the "big iron on his hip" might well send the Danes diving under their desks at this costume accessory so "inappropriate" to their environment! To drive home this point more forcibly, while cowboy fashions might pass muster in Denmark, what if his obsession were with astronauts instead? What if he habitually went out in public dressed in a spacesuit? It might not be "threatening," but it certainly is weird. We know exactly what he'd be labeled: a "space cadet"!
So what people see as "weird" or "absurd" is not necessarily all about "gender." Still, the author seemed to perceive from the viewpoint of many ordinary people why crossdressers seem "strange," and initially I thought he might be a non-crossdresser himself. That's because the article is not an informed explanation of why some males crossdress while most others don't. So at first blush it seemed more like an attempt by a non-crossdresser to comprehend, in "universal human terms" (the wish to "play a part," the little boy's cowboy outfit and so on), why males who are actually different from himself might wish to explore the experience of being a woman.
In this vein I must say I've always liked that quote from Terence. I was even moved to ask myself how to translate into Latin the phrase the writer interpolated, "including mini skirts or a hairband." Since my Latin is nothing to write home about, I gave it a shot with Google Translate, which came up with "inter mini lacinias aut fascia"--showing that Google isn't so hot at Latin either!
I was also interested to learn, from the paragraph you didn't reproduce here, about Jane Austen for instance:
To write Mansfield Park, Jane Austen had to learn how to dress up not only in the grey simple frocks of an impoverished sixteen-year-old schoolgirl (her heroine Fanny Price) but also the braided jackets of a middle-aged swaggering member of the aristocracy (Sir Thomas Bertram) and the black waistcoat of a sensitive would-be clergyman (Edmund Bertram).
I'm guessing you omitted this paragraph because it contains some rather raunchy stuff about Gustave Flaubert later on!
However, I swiftly concluded that my initial guess was wrong; that the writer was indeed a crossdresser himself (or "herself"). Never mind fussing about pronouns; his writing was interesting to analyze. In his final paragraph he wrote that "we shouldn't be scared"--but who is this "we" he's talking about? It's very ambiguous. In that paragraph he could be writing from the viewpoint of ordinary people, saying they have no need to fear crossdressers as some kind of "threat" to normal society. That's an entirely valid and praiseworthy plea for understanding and tolerance. But that's not necessarily who he meant by "we." And in his penultimate paragraph he was surely writing from the viewpoint of a crossdresser instead: "It may of course be a bit disturbing to sense that one is really not so firmly anchored to the gender one was born into."
His identification with the pleasures of crossdressing seemed too intimate for him to be otherwise. I particularly noted his appreciation of the tactile delights of dressing in female clothing: the feeling of bra straps, walking in heels and so forth. He seemed far too well acquainted with these to be a non-crossdresser. He verged on matters of sexuality too when he wrote of what it might feel like to kiss an unshaven man.
It's even possible to discern one of his motives for crossdressing: "the cross dresser samples the intense, fascinating satisfaction of being simultaneously himself and the object of his desire." This fits all too well with the phenomenon postulated as "autogynephilia," and sounds like something he personally experiences. I do acknowledge that this is not every crossdresser's experience, and furthermore, that for many, crossdressing is impelled by a mixture of motives. But this one is clearly significant to the writer himself.
So I was initially looking at this article backwards! As if the author were saying, on behalf of ordinary people at large: "Aren't crossdressers really just like the rest of us? Why can't we see that?" When in fact what he was trying to say, from the viewpoint of a crossdresser, was the converse: "Aren't you ordinary people really just like us? Why can't you see that?"
But the fact is, we are not "just like" one another. Not at all! Even we crossdressers ourselves can be very different from one another.
So how well does the article fulfill the promise of its title? In trying to describe the subjective experience of a crossdresser, it does well enough. From the viewpoint of a certain type of crossdresser, that is. It still falls short with respect to males who crossdress for other reasons, and that's one criticism I agree with.
Apart from that, it is not an explanation of crossdressing in terms that most ordinary people--males in particular--will necessarily identify with. It's all very well to talk about the wish to play a role--to be a cowboy hero, or an astronaut as I said, or a swashbuckling pirate: all "popular" fantasies. But how many "ordinary" males have a burning wish to feel bra straps around their shoulders, or a skirt swishing around their nylon-clad legs--let alone kiss another man with bristles on his chin? They won't "get it."
How do we explain how and why we're different? When I speak of "explanations," I don't necessarily mean ultimate explanations, like the genetic factors that make us all different--or for gender-linked traits, most likely the hormonal anomalies affecting brain development in utero that lead us to be "born different" after gestation. (And "different" in different ways too, regardless of genetics.) But at least the differences of mind seem to me to need further emphasis in an article on "psychology."
Speaking of "mind," Brandi, a trivial point, but one that left me curious: is there any significance to the asterisk following the word "sex" in your post that was not in the original? I didn't see anything remarkable about it in the original article. Admittedly it's often arbitrary or unclear whether we're referring to someone's "sex" or their "gender." And some people have an unthinking tendency to replace the word "sex" with "gender" across the board, regardless of meaning. There is of course a distinction: that someone's "sex" is genetic and anatomical, while their "gender" is psychological. "Sex" is in the body; "gender" is in the mind. Nevertheless the author, in referring to "the sex one has been profoundly curious about," was no doubt writing about women seen as physical creatures--how could he know what's in women's minds, after all?--so the term "sex" seemed appropriate.
But in terms of "mind," it's the differences in thinking and in motivations that need highlighting in order to help anyone "different" to comprehend why others act the way they do. It reminds me a little--a dreadful example, I know--of how people scratch their heads over a terrible crime and ask "how could anyone do such a thing"? They're trying
to "understand" it in terms of how most of us think and feel--a futile exercise--not of the differences in the mind of the perpetrator, which need explaining.
The irony of this article is that while many ordinary people don't comprehend why others want to crossdress, the author doesn't seem to comprehend why so many don't want to!
That's where he goes wrong. He claims "We should accept that the adult cross-dresser is no different" in motivation from "ordinary" people. That's simply not true. The reason why Jane Austen, say, donned the attire of the opposite sex was quite different from what motivates most crossdressers. The writer seems to be begging people to ask themselves "Aren't you all just like me? Don't you think and feel just as I do in this universal human wish to play a role? Doesn't that explain why people crossdress?"
Unfortunately most people's answers to these questions will be "No." It needs a far more candid exposition of how some, unlike most, feel a special need to identify with the opposite sex, to experience in imagination or otherwise how it might feel to be that sex, or to be "bi-curious" (as the writer at least seems to be), or to have a stronger than usual tendency toward fetishism, to have an exceptional aesthetic attraction toward feminine clothing (no matter how abstract)--even a wish to defy societal norms--or any such traits that can motivate a compulsion to crossdress.
Without that, the author's article comes across more as an "excuse" for crossdressing, an excuse he's pleading with people to accept, but which proves in the end to be inadequate. Still, it's an interesting article anyway, so thank you, Brandi.
Originally Posted by Marianne S
. Other then that I appreciate your take, there is a lot of thought put into it.
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